the early-evening news

Bill Cosby to Embarrass Self With New Rap Album

Photo Illustration: Everett Bogue; Photos: Getty Images

Cosby Raps! Oft-sweatered pudding advocate Bill Cosby will release his first-ever rap album, for some reason. State of Emergency will feature curse-free hip-hop songs on topics like parenting, drug abuse, and the high-school dropout rate. It sounds terrible, but we’ll listen on the sole condition that he releases it under the name Ghostface Dad. [AllHipHop]

Jay-Z’s Rep Denies New Album: After last night’s leak of a new Jay-Z song fueled speculation he could soon be releasing an album, a Def Jam spokesman says “Ain’t I†is actually old and not intended for release. If that were true, though, surely it would’ve replaced one of the fourteen crappy songs on Kingdom Come, right? [MTV]

Harry Knowles No Fan of Ratner: Ain’t It Cool News founder Harry Knowles is begging Universal not to let Brett Ratner direct The Wolfman, the upcoming Benicio del Toro werewolf movie. We sort of hope they let Ratner do it, if only because we’d finally get to see what a negative review from Harry Knowles looks like. [Aint It Cool News]

Miley Cyrus Practically Bigger Than Star Wars: The new 3-D concert movie Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds, opening tomorrow, has already presold more tickets than almost any other film in history. [Newsweek]

Awful Truth: Ratings for Fox’s new lie-detecting reality show The Moment of Truth were down 23 percent from last week’s premiere, which is way better than we were expecting, having seen last week’s premiere. [HR]